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Author | Topic: Unintelligent design (recurrent laryngeal nerve) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
lyx2no Member (Idle past 5041 days) Posts: 1277 From: A vast, undifferentiated plane. Joined: |
[EFT] is about tapping on body points in order to change emotional states. And after reading your posts I will go ahead and agree you're tapped. I think we're done here. It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say. Anon
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traderdrew Member (Idle past 5479 days) Posts: 379 From: Palm Beach, Florida Joined: |
ID was hatched to promote fundamentalist Christian beliefs after the Edwards vs. Aguillard decision exposed creation "science" as all creation and no science. Intelligent design was hatched long before the Edwards vs. Aguillard decision. "Through these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have, at first, derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws.... [Thus] this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being" That was a quote from The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy written by none other than Sir Isaac Newton
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AdminNosy Administrator Posts: 4755 From: Vancouver, BC, Canada Joined: |
Please get back to the RLN. Thank you.
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traderdrew Member (Idle past 5479 days) Posts: 379 From: Palm Beach, Florida Joined: |
I have repeated many times only 3 pages of discussion that as of today, there is no proved function of the route the RLN takes. I repeated this in almost all of my posts. The appendix was thought for years to be just a vestigial structure (has no function). However, fairly recently, researchers at Duke University discovered it has at least one function and that is to keep healthy levels of probiotic bacteria in your intestines. Those who have it removed are more likely to develop Crohn's disease.
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traderdrew Member (Idle past 5479 days) Posts: 379 From: Palm Beach, Florida Joined: |
If you were honestly looking for an explanation, instead of demanding unethical surgical experiments as traderdrew does Looking for the effects of damage could also be foretelling. But damage doesn't necessarily mean destroyed. Unethical? We have gone at it before PaulK and I know you are no proponent of intelligent design. I would have thought it would have been ethical to correct a mishap of the Darwinian process. Wouldn't you agree? Perhaps you are not so sure the RLN is a result of Darwinian evolution?
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: But it should at least give a pointer of where to look for any function dependent on the nerve operating properly.
quote: It might seem so to someone who places some abstract idea of perfection above the interests of the patient. However, even if you had a practical means of rerouting the nerve with no significant risk of damaging it (and you don't) major surgery to correct a feature which is merely poorly designed carrying with it some minor risks would be highly questionable in itself.
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traderdrew Member (Idle past 5479 days) Posts: 379 From: Palm Beach, Florida Joined: |
It might seem so to someone who places some abstract idea of perfection above the interests of the patient. However, even if you had a practical means of rerouting the nerve with no significant risk of damaging it (and you don't) major surgery to correct a feature which is merely poorly designed carrying with it some minor risks would be highly questionable in itself. I never did make any demands for the surgery. I simply assumed perhaps it has been done to an animal with a similar design and since some of you are so sure it is a poor design, you have read about the results of damage or destruction to the nerve. My position is "I do not know" if it is a bad design or not and I proposed a hypothesis. I think you, GrannyMagda and many others insist it is a bad design simply because something wants you to believe this other than evidence. I will define that as 'Darwinian dogma'. Sorry if that makes you upset. I called her bluff in my last post to her believing this was the case.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Really ? Message 56
Show me the surgical experiment and the results and I will agree with you.
Show me that it has no function by surgically removing it and reworking the pathway you think it should go if a designer designed it.
[quote]
I simply assumed perhaps it has been done to an animal with a similar design and since some of you are so sure it is a poor design, you have read about the results of damage or destruction to the nerve.
[/qs] Even with animal experiments there are obvious problems. Animals are unable to self-report symptoms, any effects noted could easily be due to side-effects of the surgery, and the surgery would be unable to produce an optimal design anyway. And if we cannot get useful results out of the experiment then it is unethical to perform it even on animals.
quote: But of course the position that it is a poor design IS based on evidence. It is you and slevesque who are are throwing up speculations rather than follow the evidence that we have. Indeed, so far as I can tell the whole basis of your hypothesis - a connection to the aorta - is missing. The recurrent laryngeal nerve branches off the left vagus nerve and loops around the aorta, before ascending again to the larynx.
quote: I'll call that "the pot calling the kettle black".
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traderdrew Member (Idle past 5479 days) Posts: 379 From: Palm Beach, Florida Joined:
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Really ? Message 56 It was my bluff I was referring to. I didn't assume GrannyMagda was a surgeon and if she was one, spend the money of performing one in order to prove me wrong.
But of course the position that it is a poor design IS based on evidence. No it is not, your position is based on the assumption that a designer would have never designed it that way. You assume your knowledge of science covers all ignorance on the subject and you know enough about this network of nerves to make this determination. I say you don't know enough. I could have stated, "Don't worry PaulK and others, we (proponents of I.D.) will find the reasons for the RLN through science." If I did mean that, it would be a dogmatic assumption. I also know from previous debates that you have to get the last word PaulK. You can have it because I have drilled my point here.
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PaulK Member Posts: 18061 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: But of course, that is just your assumption. Just as you assumed a connection to the aorta. The fact is that the nerve takes a long, meandering path from the brain to the larynx, and there is no sign that it needs to do so. Damage to the nerve shows symptoms relating to the larynx, not to anything else. There are no signs of other connections (or any sensible reason for other connections) on offer.
quote: By which you mean that I don't like to let falsehoods go unanswered.
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 363 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: |
Traderdrew, I think you're still missing the point.
Notice how the nerves are connected. What about them?
Granny writes: For the RLN to have any role in emotion, it would need to connect to more than just the larynx; traderdrew writes: Well it does. It connects to the aortic arch as you state. A) No it doesn't. B) I never said any such thing. The RLN does not connect to the aortic arch. It simply takes a detour around it, making no neural connection as it goes past and doing absolutely nothing in the chest cavity. The RLN connects the brain and the larynx. That's it. The diagram you linked to shows as much.
No, we convey emotional states with our voices. This is simply gibberish and irrelevant gibberish at that. If you want to suggest that the RLN has some role in emotion, you need to provide evidence for that. All you have done is point to the role of speech in communication. As has been pointed out repeatedly, lots of body parts are involved in communication, the face, the eyes, the hands. None of them connect to the RLN so we can safely conclude that the RLN is not needed to express emotion. If you think otherwise, please provide some kind of solid evidence to that effect.
That is a new one to me. I thought we conveyed emotions with the muscles in our faces. Muscles that are not connected to the RLN. Thus, the RLN is not needed to communicate emotion.
Show me the surgical experiment and the results and I will agree with you. What the hell are you talking about? I'm saying that no such experiment has taken place. If performed in humans, such an experiment would be unethical in the extreme. Your best bet there would be to hop into a time machine, go back to WWII and ask Joseph Mengele to help you out. As it happens though, we don't need any experiments to see that the RLN's long detour exposes it to unnecessary risk of injury. Here is Wiki on the clinical significance of the RLN;
quote: Note that the longer the nerve and the more areas of the body where it must travel, the greater the exposure to possible injury. This is just simple logic. A shorter nerve, that took a direct route would be at much less risk of damage.
Show me that it has no function by surgically removing it and reworking the pathway you think it should go if a designer designed it. Pay attention. I didn't say that the RLN had no function.
Why does EFT work? Look up EFT on YouTube. You can't tell me it doesn't. Oh, I think I can. EFT is based upon pseudo-scientific bullshit. Your personal anecdotes are not evidence in its favour, they are irrelevant. EFT is irrelevant. EFT is not the topic, the recurrent laryngeal nerve is the topic.
The appendix was thought for years to be just a vestigial structure (has no function). Well gosh, vestigial organs and your crass misunderstandings of them are not the topic either. The topic is the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
My position is "I do not know" if it is a bad design or not and I proposed a hypothesis. Fine. Great. Doubts as to whether your vague musings could justify the description "hypothesis" aside, you have every right to concoct a hypothesis. Just don't expect me or anyone else to give a shit until you can produce evidence. Considering that you are not a neurologist and that you give the impression of being deeply ignorant of anatomy, I'm not holding my breath.
I think you, GrannyMagda and many others insist it is a bad design simply because something wants you to believe this other than evidence. I will define that as 'Darwinian dogma'. Sorry if that makes you upset. I called her bluff in my last post to her believing this was the case. Oh yes? Where exactly did you "call my bluff"? I assure you traderdrew, I'm not bluffing. I call the RLN a bad design because it exposes itself to increased risk (as compared to a more direct route) fopr zero benefit. That's bad design. You are the one with the problem here. Your dogma tells you that this feature must have been designed; that is why you are left groping around for an alternative function that probably doesn't exist and (at best) for which you have not one shred of evidence. Let's be clear, if you want to suggest a function for the RLN, other than controlling the muscles of the larynx, YOU NEED TO PRESENT EVIDENCE FOR THAT FUNCTION. Idle musings don't count. Appealing to arguments you might have at some point in the future doesn't count. Making vague gestures toward pseudo-scientific nonsense doesn't count. Present solid and compelling evidence that the RLN has an alternative function that necessitates its detour or withdraw. Mutate and Survive "A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod
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Briterican Member (Idle past 4274 days) Posts: 340 Joined: |
slavesque writes: I hve found GM (Granny Magda] to be very close-minded on this topic. I have repeated many times only 3 pages of discussion that as of today, there is no proved function of the route the RLN takes. I repeated this in almost all of my posts. But of course, since I say that I am confident that, since our knowledge of biology is far from complete, a function will be identified for it, (A situation that has happened at least 100 times in the history of medicine) he has called this smokes and screens. I appreciate that you agree that the route the RLN takes has not been shown to have any purpose, but Granny Magda is not alone if he was dubious of your conclusion that "since our knowledge of biology is far from complete, a function will be identified for it". Is it not possible that because of the mechanics of evolution (bottom up rather than top down) there might be many purposeless forms? Or, is the entire universe the "mother-of-all-conspiracy-theories", where everything has a purpose and nothing is accidental?
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 363 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: |
Hello slevesque, I see you are forced to resort to personal abuse to fill out your posts.
I hve found GM to be very close-minded on this topic. Oh boo-hoo. Yes I'm closed minded. How very closed-minded of me to demand evidence for a hypothesis before taking it seriously. How closed-minded of me to dismiss the dogma-driven speculations of non-neurologists on the subject of nerves. How very closed-minded of me to dismiss arguments that are based upon gross misunderstandings of biology. What a closed-minded rotter I am. You may have heard the saying "If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out."? This is exactly what you are doing. Forgive me if I don't join you.
I have repeated many times only 3 pages of discussion that as of today, there is no proved function of the route the RLN takes. I repeated this in almost all of my posts. And to date, this remains the only sensible thing you have said on the subject.
But of course, since I say that I am confident that, since our knowledge of biology is far from complete, a function will be identified for it, (A situation that has happened at least 100 times in the history of medicine) he has called this smokes and screens. This topic has nothing to do with vestigial organs and your apparent inability to understand what they are. This portion of your argument (such as it is) is founded upon a total misapprehension, thus it is completely invalid.
I'm pretty sure he's the only one on his side that thinks this way, as I have been making honest assertions that are very reasonable, and so probably that, even though the other defendants of evolution don't speak out, they don't find this too far-fetched at all. Oh look, more unevidenced assertions. You seem to like these. For the record, your assertions are not so very far-fetched. I'm not saying that they are (in Message 10 I say as much; you ask "do you not think that it's wiring could end up having a positive effect, a function ?" and I respond "Maybe - name it."). I am not saying that it is impossible or even especially far-fetched that a function might be found. What I am saying is that until such a function actually is found it is unacceptable to make appeal to it in debate. Debate with the evidence you actually have not the evidence you might like to have. Mutate and Survive Edited by Granny Magda, : Correct typo. "A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod
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Briterican Member (Idle past 4274 days) Posts: 340 Joined: |
traderdew writes: I think you, GrannyMagda and many others insist it is a bad design simply because something wants you to believe this other than evidence. I find it astonishing that you would try to claim that anyone is arguing from a position devoid of evidence when you have stated:
I should do more investigating but I believe the design is because we feel emotions in our bodies and we can convey them through the sounds of our voices. We can convey trouble or stress or fright with our voices. When we feel emotions we do not feel them in our brains, we feel emotions in our bodies. We can call the RLN "bad design", and we do so based on the evidence that the long detour serves no purpose and actually poses a risk, but what should really be said is that it is "not designed". Evolution works bottom up, not top down. I'm not qualified to discuss what is known about the evolutionary history of the RLN's ridiculous detour, but I see no particular logic in jumping to the conclusion that it DOES serve some as yet unknown purpose.
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4965 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
And nobody is arguing that because the route is explained by evolution it cannot also have a purpose. However the fact is that it is very unlikely that the route has a purpose, given our understanding of the nervous system. You cannot even offer even a superficially plausible explanation for the route. If you were honestly looking for an explanation, instead of demanding unethical surgical experiments as traderdrew does you could try looking for the known effects of damage to the nerve. If the route has a function, we should expect damage to the nerve to cause effects in areas which it passes by. I gave a superficially plausible explanation in the beginning, but they are not permitted it seems. Even if it is logically plausible, and even if they are presented as a genuine guess (and not as any sort of fact)
Would that be as closed-minded as completely ignoring the reasons why it is believed that the route does not have a function and setting up a strawman in its place ? I would be interesting to know what are those reasons to think it has no function ? I mean, the fact that it is the result of evolution isn't a reason to think it has no function, as you stated above. An appeal to our current level of knowledge also isn't a reason, because we all agree that our knowledge is far from complete
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